Revealed comparative advantages in academic publishing of “old” and “new” European Union Member States 1998–2018

The paper uses a variant of the Revealed Comparative Advantage index to examine comparative advantages of the European Union (EU) countries in 254 research areas and their development from 1998 to 2018, focusing mostly on the split into the old and new EU members and their convergence. The results confirm that there has been convergence inside the groups as well as between the groups. EU researchers from different countries now publish papers in more similar research areas and the countries’ research-area mix is more coherent than before. The EU has increased its comparative advantage in the majority of research areas in the field of Science and in almost all research areas in Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities in the last two decades. On average, the growth has been faster in new members than in old members. Science is still the dominant source of comparative advantage for the bloc, but Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities are set to challenge its lead.